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Book report

Name of the book :Pakistan beyond the crisis state

Submitted by :Abdul Muqeet khan

FA10-BCS-023

SECTION: A

Two features of the book merit extraordinary consideration. The first is

its refreshing honesty. The book does anything but tread lightly, even on

some very, very sensitive nerves. In the opening chapter, Ayesha Jalal

provides an account of some of the creative explanations often used to

cohere the idea of Pakistan. In the shorter form, we are denied Jalals

signature narrative style. Yet, this is more than made up for by the calm

and assertive confidence with which she takes a hatchet to the states

clumsy, inadequate and failed attempts to forge national identity in

Pakistan.

The second is the outstanding and powerful positivity of tone that the

book takes. Many of the contributors, like Ahmed Rashid, are not exactly

known to be optimistic and positive observers of the Pakistani condition.

Yet the book offers a realistic and positive set of ideas about what has

enabled Pakistan to survive, as a society and a state, and what are the

likely realities of the near- and medium-term future that will enable the

country to go from surviving to thriving.

Lodhis own essay, from which the title of the book is derived, is an

exceptionally good summary of post-1999 Pakistan. Her analysis of what

constituted the substance of the Musharraf era, and what factors brought

it to an end, offers a very cogent look at recent political history. Most

importantly, she articulates some of the conditions that reflect at least

a partial, if not textbook, kind of emergence of a politically relevant

Pakistani middle-class. In her assessment of the five possible futures

for Pakistan from here on, the most optimistic and most fragile is the

evolution of this enlarged Pakistani middle-class.

The book relies on this narrative of a Pakistani middle class, both

through explicitly appropriating the idea of an urban Pakistani middle

class, and by implicitly addressing it, and challenging it to do better.

In his essay, Why Pakistan will survive? novelist Mohsin Hamid revisits

taxation and Pakistans unsustainable fiscal realities an issue that he

has written and spoken about frequently since relocating to Pakistan.

Other contributors to the book include veteran reporter Zahid Hussain,

former ambassadors Akbar Ahmed and Munir Akram, former IMF official

Meekal Ahmed and the resident South Asia expert at the United States

Institute of Peace, Moeed Yusuf.

Yusufs contribution to the book is an excellent essay he has co-authored

with Shanza Khan, titled, Education as a strategic imperative. Derived

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from a research that Yusuf did for the Brookings Institution in 2008, the

essay articulates the current state of education, the risks involved in

allowing this situation to continue unchecked and the kinds of changes

required to change direction, from the disaster that the state of

education in Pakistan entails today to a situation in which Pakistans

youth bulge becomes a competitive advantage for Pakistan.

On the whole, the book acknowledges the problems that plague Pakistan,

and offers a reasonable set of ideas about how to tackle them. Best of

all, there is decidedly none of the self-consciousness in this book that

has in the past been a hallmark of efforts to articulate solutions to

Pakistans problems.

STRATEGIES:

There is only one strategy that I used that is reading in a flow cause

that the only way to read what is really written and not what u want to

read